Category: Arts and Letters

The Crying of Lot 84.


“His anger, let us go so far as to say, was precious to him. He had lived his way into it – in Burma and Paris and London and on the road to Wigan pier, and in Spain, being shot at, and eventually wounded, by fascists – he had invested blood, pain and hard labour to earn his anger, and was as attached to it as any capitalist to his capital.” The Guardian excerpts Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming intro to 1984. (Via Random Walks.)

Dodge this.

The final trailer for The Matrix Reloaded is now online. And – for the return of Agent(s) Smith if nothing else – it looks like more fun than you can shake a stick at. With two of these, The Hulk, and X2, it looks like we’re headed for a fanboy summer. Speaking of which, isn’t it about time for some quality Return of the King news?

By, the way, I finally caught Final Flight of the Osiris, and while it was ok it definitely wasn’t worth sitting through Dreamcatcher for. Dreamcatcher was basically two and a half hours of being stuck in the last fifty pages of a Stephen King novel. [King starts great stories but all too often (It, The Stand, The Tommyknockers…heck, almost all of ’em) has no idea how to finish them.] I’m not sure how closely the movie followed the book, but it was just all over the place, and it made no sense on many levels. (What exactly is the life-cycle of these creatures?) After forty-five minutes, I was really bored. Can’t say I recommend it, that is unless watching a misshapen-looking Donnie Wahlberg proclaim “I Duddits!” to the heavens is your bag.

I don’t want to see this, Jonesey!

Detective Story, the third web installment of The Animatrix, is now online. Nice to look at, but wooden dialogue and a pointless story make this one rather disappointing. I’ve heard good things about Final Flight of the Osiris, but first I have to steel myself to sit through Dreamcatcher.

It’s Oh So Quiet.

Still catching up with my Oscar slate, and last night’s foray was Phillip Noyce’s remake of The Quiet American. All in all, very well done, and a battered, despairing Michael Caine deserves an Oscar for this much more than he ever did for his turn in the schlocky Cider House Rules. (As I said last week, though, the Best Actor field this year is very, very strong, and I still think Day-Lewis has the edge – having not yet seen any of the movies featuring Best Actress nominees, I can’t really comment on the women.) Brendan Fraser is also quite good, and the political dimension of the story (i.e. America’s involvement in sponsoring Vietnamese terrorism) is very well-integrated with the dramatic tale being told. If anything, the film slipped in the ratings to the right only because (a) The Pianist was better, or at least more powerful, (b) I found this film a bit slow in the first hour, partly because the tale begins at the end with the death of the “quiet” American (not much of a spoiler – it’s almost the first shot in the film), and thus much of the dramatic tension in the story has already been siphoned off, and (c) the “Vietnam is a woman” allegory is a bit heavy-handed – the audience can pick up on what’s going on without it being stated over and over again. But it’s worth seeing, and Michael Caine is magnificent.

Subways and Synonyms.

Two random and unrelated links for your perusal – First, What NYC Subway are you? (Via Fair Play and Substantial Justice.) Despite wanting to be the A-C-E or 1-9, since those are the ones I use, I kept getting the J-M-Z…Sigh.) Second, the Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus, which offers a spinning and strangely captivating wordweb for each entry you choose. It’s neat (syn.: peachy, keen, interesting, boffo…)